Monthly Archive:: February 2009

If there is one company out there that embodies "former glory", it just has to be Silicon Graphics Incorporated. Once one of the most well-respected high-performance computer and software makers of the world, it is now a mere shadow of its former self. The most recent set of financial results from the company do not bode well for the already troubled company.

According to Keir Thomas, author of "Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference," the said book has been downloaded over 150,000 times within days of its launch. The book is supposedly written for even the timid of the Windows users who wish to switch over, assuming that the user has "zero Linux knowledge." According to Thomas, the book takes the unknowing user by the hand throughout the installation process and then delves into the file system and manager, and even covers the command line features as well as system security. The book was published and sold for $9.94 on Amazon, but is also available for free as a downloadable PDF here. Assuming each download represents a struggling to-be Linux user, it sounds like there are just barrels of them waiting to be converted.

Recently, the first public version was released of the alpha development version of REBOL 3, the advanced programming language by Carl Sassenrath of Amiga OS fame. Now, native versions have also been released for Linux and Mac OS X. Like the private version of a year ago, the Linux version runs on Syllable Server. These versions are currently comparable to REBOL/Core 2, without the graphical system, and can be downloaded through here. REBOL is an important part of Syllable's cross-platform strategy.

Common Windows problems could soon be solved by clicking a "Fix It" button. Microsoft has started putting the button on its web-based support pages that detail the most common problems hitting PC and Windows users. Clicking the button kicks off a download that, once run, carries out the series of steps needed to fix a specific problem or remove a bug. Microsoft also has plans to extend the click-to-fix system to help users recover from a crash.

You have to hand it to them: Microsoft has made an excellent marketing move the last couple of days. Remember the UAC issue we reported on earlier? It turned out that changing UAC settings did not actually trigger a UAC dialog, allowing scripts and malware to disable UAC altogether without the user ever noticing anything - obviously leaving the system wide open. After stating numerous times the company wouldn't do anything about this issue, they have now done a complete 180, and will fix UAC to work as many had already advised. A brilliant marketing ploy right there.

Is it Windows 7 or KDE 4? In this video, ZDNet takes to Sydney's streets to find out what people think of what they think is a Windows 7 demonstration. Some funny responses by the passers-by in this little nonsense-investigation.

Lim Ding Wen, a fourth grader in Singapore, has taken up writing applications for Apple's all-popular iPhone, his latest of which is called "Doodle Kids," aptly named for its doodling or painting capabilities. He began his computer experience at the ripe age of two and has a good twenty programming projects under his belt. He is fluent in six programming languages. His father also writes iPhone apps, and they often compare statistics to see whose is more popular-- as it is, Lim's app has over 4,000 downloads. Do you think perhaps we could be calling him "King Ding" in thirty years when he's taken over the digital world?

PureMobile sent us in the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic for a review, the first Symbian OS smartphone with S60 5.0 in it to date. This impressive-looking smartphone looks like a darling touchscreen phone, but is it really? Read on for more.

Microsoft has confirmed that an upgrade license for Windows 7 from Windows XP will be available, but there is a catch: users will have to wipe their hard drive and perform a clean install - so technically, it's not an upgrade. Still, the upgrade license will probably be cheaper than the full license, so it might just be worth it.

Opera has announced a new JavaScript engine. "Over the past few months, a small team of developers and testers have been working on implementing a new ECMAScript/JavaScript engine for Opera. When Opera's current ECMAScript engine, called Futhark, was first released in a public version, it was the fastest engine on the market. That engine was developed to minimize code footprint and memory usage, rather than to achieve maximum execution speed. This has traditionally been a correct trade-off on many of the platforms Opera runs on. The Web is a changing environment however, and tomorrow's advanced web applications will require faster ECMAScript execution, so we have now taken on the challenge to once again develop the fastest ECMAScript engine on the market."

Michael "Monty" Widenius, original author and founder of MySQL, has announced he has now resigned from Sun to start his own company, Monty Program Ab. Rumours of his departure had circulated last September and Widenius now confirms these had an element of truth to them. According to him, his issues with MySQL 5.1 GA were pivotal in the decision making process and his public warnings of those problems "had the wanted effect". That effect was an agreement to stay on for three months to "help Sun work out things in MySQL development" and allow Sun to "create an optimal role for me".

Between all the Windows 7 hubbub, you'd almost forget that that other operating system maker is also hard at work on the next release of its operating system. Even though Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was supposed to be a release that did not focus on end user features, it seems that Apple will still include a number of those in Snow Leopard. The new cat will follow in Windows 7's footsteps by including a location awareness framework, while also allowing programmers to make use of the multitouch trackpads in Apple's laptops.

Linux Containers provide lightweight virtualization that lets you isolate processes and resources without the need to provide instruction interpretation mechanisms and other complexities of full virtualization. In this step-by-step tour of Linux container tools (LXC), the author introduces you to the Linux container tools and shows how to get up and running on them. This article will show you how Linux containers significantly lower the overhead of using true virtualization, while still providing isolation.

So Windows 7 is supposed to be screaming fast, right? Anecdotal accounts report it booting quicker and feeling snappier than Vista, but the proof is in stats. TuxRadar has benchmarked Windows 7 against Vista and Ubuntu Linux, comparing install time, disk space usage, boot speeds and filesystem performance. The graphs also show how the sparkly ext4 filesystem compares against its older brother.